Why I Focus on What I Need Right Now Instead of Obsessing Over the Future

a post by Jan Picicci for the Tiny Buddha blog


“The next message you need is always right where you are.” ~Ram Dass

I want you to go back to New Year’s Day 2009 with me for a second. I’d recently left a job and was embarking upon a new career, one in which I was self-employed.

I pulled out all the stops and created a vision board that contained all of the things: how much money I wanted to earn, how I wanted to dress, where I wanted to vacation, how I wanted to eat, and everything else I could think of. I thought if I created this vision board, if I planned out exactly how things would go, somehow I’d find satisfaction and peace.

I remember later that same year visiting my then-boyfriend (now husband) when he was working out of state. The area where he was working was gorgeous, and I kept writing down the future I wanted, what it would be like to live in a place like this, how it would feel if only we could afford a place here, near the ocean.

I also remember being obsessive and miserable.

None of the stuff I was clinging to so tightly worked out. Life unfolded, all was well, but all that planning wasn’t making my life better; it was making it more stressful.

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Success-Syndrome: The Ambition-Depression Connection

a blog post by Therese J. Borchard for World of Psychology

When she was just 13 years old, Jenn Cohen fell in love with the circus and was determined to make a career out of it, which was highly unusual at the time.She explained in an inspiring TEDx talk that she worked incredibly hard to get to a point in her career where she “arrived”, performing in Europe, garnering accolades and attention – the place where she always aspired to be.

And yet she felt empty.

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Please read the post by Therese right to the very bottom. “I’m releasing my cows one by one” could become the latest Ele Friends slogan.

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Ambition at work and career satisfaction: The mediating role of taking charge behavior and the moderating role of pay

an article by Sabrine El Baroudi (Canadian University Dubai, United Arab Emirates), Chen Fleisher, (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and Svetlana N. Khapova and Paul Jansen (VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Julia Richardson, (Curtin Business School, Perth, Australia) published in Career Development International Volume 22 Issue 1 (2017)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of pay in the relationship between employee ambition and taking charge behavior, and its subsequent effects on employee career satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach
A two-wave quantitative investigation was conducted among alumni of a large public university in the Netherlands.

Findings
The results show that taking charge behavior mediates the positive relationship between employee ambition and career satisfaction. They also show that pay positively moderates this mediation, such that the relationship between employee ambition and taking charge behavior is stronger when ambitious employees receive an increase in pay, leading to increased career satisfaction. Conversely, a decrease in pay does not moderate ambitious employees’ taking charge behavior and the impact on their career satisfaction.

Research limitations/implications
The study draws on self-report data collected in one country: the Netherlands.

Practical implications
The study highlights the importance of pay for higher job involvement, demonstrating its impact on taking charge behavior among employees with higher levels of ambition.

Originality/value
This is the first empirical study to examine the impact of pay on employees’ taking charge behavior and the subsequent implications for career satisfaction.

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Discourses of ambition, gender and part-time work

an article by Yvonne Benschop, Marieke van den Brink, Hans Doorewaard and Joke Leenders (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) published in Human Relations Volume 66 Number 5 (May 2013)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to unravel the gendered practices in ambition and challenge the hegemonic masculinity within it.

Our findings are based on a qualitative study using focus groups in which Dutch men and women, full-timers and part-timers, constructed different meanings of ambition. The men and women in our study used three manifest discourses of ambition in the workplace, regarding individual development, mastery of the task, and upward career mobility.

A critical analysis of these three discourses indicates how cultural and organisational norms on gender and working hours affect these constructions of ambition. We argue that a fourth discourse, ‘ambition as a resource’, is a major driving force of inequality.

‘Ambition as a resource’ is the dominant hegemonic discourse in organisations, and its power effects mitigate the impact of other discourses on ambition, revealing the potential for change when different discourses of ambition are valued.

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Ambition Gone Awry: …

The Long-Term Socioeconomic Consequences of Misaligned and Uncertain Ambitions in Adolescence

an article by Ricardo Sabates (University of Sussex), Angel L. Harris (Princeton University) and Jeremy Staff (The Pennsylvania State University) published in Social Science Quarterly Volume 92 Issue 4 (December 2011)

Abstract

Objective
The objective of this study was to investigate whether misaligned or uncertain ambitions in adolescence influence the process of socioeconomic attainment.


Methods
Using 34 years of longitudinal data from the British Cohort Study (BCS70), we considered whether youth with

1. misaligned ambitions (i.e., those who either over- or underestimate the level of education required for their desired occupation), 
2. both low occupational aspirations and educational expectations (low-aligned ambitions), and 
3. uncertainty with regard to their future occupations (uncertain ambitions) at age 16

experienced more unemployment spells, lower educational attainment, and lower hourly wages in adulthood compared to youth with high occupational aspirations and educational expectations (high-aligned ambitions).

Results
Youth who hold misaligned or uncertain aspirations show long-term deficits in employment stability and educational attainment, which in turn leads to lower wage attainments at age 34.

Conclusion
Misaligned and uncertain ambitions in adolescence compromise the construction of life paths and the realization of long-term educational and occupational goals.

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